Is the US health insurance system essentially a scam?
Yes it is a scam, especially from the perspective of a healthcare provider in a non-acute care setting. Pretty much the only thing health insurance allows you to do in the United States is to have the privledge of negotiating with the insurance company when they deny you the services that your doctor has ordered.From the perspective of the insurer it is not a scam but merely a game with large stakes: namely the ability to determine not only the kind of medical treatment a patient receives, but also the timing of this treatment, and its cost. In short, those who benefit from the “scam” will not admit that it is a scam because it benefits them.The only use of health insurance is the ability to negotiate with an insurer. The only time it's cost effective is in catastrophic emergencies. These are the life altering things people don't expect to happen and therefore do not plan for.When people expect their health insurance to actually cover the costs of their routine healthcare, they are often surprised that their insurance does not want to pay. They don't want to provide the specific medication, pay for the tests or procedures, and cover the cost of the doctors fees. We have been lead to believe that health insurance is intended to cover these routine expenses. The truth is that you are being ripped off by not only the insurers, but the drug companies, and medical providers, all who need to charge higher and higher prices for things that really haven't gone up at all in price. They have been artificially inflated by the bloated and absolutely monstrous system of regulations and mountains upon mountains of redundant and useless paperwork that serves no medical purpose other than to drive up costs and allow another middleman to skim profit from denying people the medical care the think and their medical providers think they need.
How can the US best transition into a single payer health system, while minimizing the loss of jobs in the health insurance industry?
Re-engineering businesses to use modern practises usually leaves the new business with fewer jobs than it started with. The aim of exercise is to lose as many jobs as possible by doing the same amount of work using fewer people. In the case of the US healthcare system a lot of the people from the insurance companies will find jobs in the new organisation. The ones that don’t will include people with sales skills that other industries can use.I would expect most of the insurance company employees over the age of 55 would take early retirement. Possibly not by choice. Industry believes (wrongly) that anyone over 50 can’t be retrained.What will make this different from other re-engineering exercises is that the market will expand enormously. Roughly 25% of Americans have decided not to take medication that has been prescribed for them because of the cost. Making healthcare universally available will enable those people to complete their treatments. There will be a huge backlog of people with ailments that they have not had treated because of costs. Chewing through that backlog will keep a lot of people very busy. Once that backlog has been cleared employment levels will settle at a new lower level.Commercial organisations use outplacement services to find new jobs for people thay lay off. The new healthcare service should continue to allocate a budget for that.
Nissan xterra alarm didn't go off when window was broken?
someone smashed my window out and stole my after market cd player and flip flops. ******* low-lives .. anyways my question is. I have the factory alarm system on my car but when the busted the window the alarm did not go off. Any reason how that happened? Or do some alarm systems not cover windows breaking. Also i have state farm insurance, will they cover the expense of the broken window and stolen items and the broken glove box? THANKS
Why are Americans so brainwashed about health care?
Because they have been lied to. I live in a country with universal healthcoverage. No one is denied treatment because they have no insurance (unless they are an illegal immigrant). If a political party here stood promising to introduce the US system of healthcare, they would never get in! Just remember, Obama has never promised to bring in universal healthcare though. FACT - the USA spends more on healthcare PER PERSON than any other nation on the planet. FACT - the US has higher death rates for kids aged under five than western European countries with universal health coverage. That means that a dead American four year old would have had a better chance of life if they were born in Canada, France, Cuba, Germany, Japan...
Can the whole healthcare company kick me out of their system for acting rude to their staff? I was too mad at them for billing me wrong and sending my bill to collections and yelled at them. My insurance only works at this place.
Yes. Abusive behavior and foul language will get you fired from a practice. I have an elderly relative with a huge sense of entitlement. He has been very abusive to many doctors and nurses (not to mention everyone else) over the years. Now no one in town will see him. Very sad because he really needs care now and is only allowed to drive within 5 miles of his home. But he did this to himself.
How do you know if a toe is broken or just bruised?
I did this...4 weeks before my wedding!! The whole bone under my toes were black & blue and I couldn't bend my pinky toe (that's the toe I hit). There's nothing a hospital can do for a broken toe anyway. I think the most they do is just tape it to your other toe, which you can do yourself. As long as you can walk, your good to go. It will hurt for a few days to weeks. Just keep it elevated when your resting & use some ice.
What are the major challenges in the US healthcare system? Is there any way we can introduce technology to reduce the overall patient costs?
There are some of the major challenges in the US healthcare:Health Spending to Reach Nearly 20% of GDP in 2025Spending is due to consume 20% of the U.S. economy by 2025; already, it’s twice as much per person as the average of other developed countries.MistakesMedical errors may account for 30 percent of overall costs.Unnecessary careExtra tests, futile end-of-life treatments, misdiagnoses as well as quackery all may drive up costs.Malpractice abuseExcess court settlements might lead to medical treatments aimed at preventing court judgments, not healing.Uninsured peopleThe number is 28 millionDemographicsAbout 11,000 individuals a day switch to Medicare, that pays only part of health care costs; the rest is shifted to individuals with private insurance. Older people also utilize more health care services.TransparencyPeople usually can’t find prices and can’t find out who delivers the best care, what treatments are the most effective and what medications work best.PharmaceuticalsGeneric drugs are cheaper and might be effective, but marketing and other pressures can lead people to choose more expensive medications.RegulationHealthcare organizations face a morass of sometimes-conflicting state and federal rules, while some aspects lack sensible regulation.In this year’s January Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase announced a partnership to cut health-care costs and upgrade services for their U.S. staff. The announcement slammed the shares of multiple organizations in the health-care sector.The giant organizations, which together employ more than 1.1 million employees, will launch an independent operation that's intended to be free from profit-making incentives.The new organization's goal at first will be to target technology solutions to simplify the healthcare system.Details of the new organization were sketchy, with principals of Amazon, Berkshire and J.P. Morgan noting that the way it will work keeps being seen. They're hoping that their sheer size will help bring the needed scale and resources to tackle the existing problems.